Corridors of the Night (26 page)

Beata listened without interrupting him.

‘The difficulty lies in the fact that Radnor and his daughter were entirely willing. She is being charged along with Rand . . .’

‘And not Radnor himself?’ she said with surprise.

‘He is claiming to have been ill and barely conscious when he made the journey from the hospital to the cottage.’

‘Really? How gallant of him!’ There was stinging sarcasm in her voice.

‘It could be true, and the jury could well believe him.’

‘What does the daughter say?’

‘Nothing, so far. She seems very dependent upon him.’

‘Financially, socially, emotionally?’ she queried.

‘Probably all of those.’

‘Oh dear. Then it all rests upon what Hester says, apart from the three children.’

‘They are too young to testify. And their parents accepted money to provide food for the youngest child still at home.’ He said it with a degree of bitterness he did not even try to hide. ‘How much can you blame parents who convince themselves that an older child will be all right if they sell him or her to someone who will pay enough money to feed and save the babies left behind, crying with hunger?’

She looked away, her eyes filling with tears.

‘I’m sorry!’ He wished profoundly he had thought before he gave words to something she should not have had to know. ‘Beata . . . I’m sorry . . .’

She swivelled back to face him, her eyes blazing through the tears. ‘Don’t you dare protect me from the truths of life as if I were a child, Oliver! I don’t deserve that!’

He was stunned. ‘I’m . . . sorry. Was I doing that?’ He was truly appalled at his own clumsiness.

‘Yes, you were. Please don’t do it again. I have seen my share of cruelty, injustice and grief. I do not need to be treated like some flower that will bruise if you touch it.’

For the first time he considered what she must have felt when Ingram York said some of the things that he had. What private, intimate cruelties had she suffered that she could tell no one, ever? What shame did she feel on his behalf that she could not speak? What dreams of hers might he have crushed, like a slowly tightening screw?

He knew how his own disillusion with Margaret had hurt him, though perhaps it was a good deal his own fault. He had chosen to believe she was different from how she really was. Awakening had cost him not only the future but the past, taking the meaning and the heart out of what he had thought it to be.

What had Beata lost that she would be humiliated to give name to? He would never ask and, please heaven, never be clumsy enough to assume again. But another apology would only make the issue bigger than it already was.

‘Medical ethics are so complicated,’ he said. ‘Experimentation is fraught with the chances of failure, and pain or even death. Yet without it we learn nothing. No new cures are found and ignorance has destroyed progress. It depends so much on whose view you have. If someone I loved were ill, I would probably consider any price payable to save them. If I were ill myself, I don’t know. I might be too tired and in too much pain to want to struggle any more. If I were starving anyway, who knows what I would do? I might go willingly, but what idea would I have of the pain I would suffer? Even the changes, perhaps irreversible, that would happen to my body, or my mind.’

‘Are you going to say that in court?’ Now she was watching him with interest, no anger left, no thought of herself at all. ‘Are you going to point out that consent cannot be informed if it is from a person with no medical understanding of what the experiment means?’

He did not bother to say again that it would be Ardal Juster that was speaking, not he. ‘Yes,’ he answered thoughtfully. ‘And I will sound as if I am standing in the path of all progress.’

‘Rand could have used someone else’s blood,’ she pointed out. ‘An adult more able to understand and willing to take the chance.’

‘That’s the thing,’ Rathbone said ruefully. ‘There is something in the blood of these three children that works every time. He has already tried others, and failed.’

‘Oh . . .’

‘There is not only the question of life, but of the quality of life,’ he continued. ‘Perhaps Radnor is more a victim of this than he realises. I have a lot of studying to do before I advise Juster what to do.’

‘Expert witnesses? Other doctors?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Don’t forget professional rivalry, Oliver. The defence will have experts, too. People perjure themselves for many reasons; some don’t even realise they are doing it. You are safer to stick to the emotional facts. Hester was taken against her will, and kept prisoner. Is there any way you can make the jury realise that if she had not been rescued, and Radnor had died, that Rand would have killed her?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘But I believe it . . . and that is a good deal of the way there.’

‘You have let your tea go cold. Let me send for a fresh pot, and eat your pie. Cook really is very good.’

He relaxed back into the chair. ‘Thank you.’

They spoke of other things, long into the evening. By the time he left he could think of little to do with the case, only how intensely he cared for Beata. How long would Ingram York cling on to his raging, damaged life, locked up in the asylum, half paralysed in a world of nightmares and silence? Surely it was also mercy to hope for his release?

Rathbone spent the rest of the week speaking to other doctors who were experts on diseases of the blood, or death from the shock of injury, and the consequent loss of blood. At Hester’s suggestion he also spoke to midwives who had delivered healthy babies, only to lose a mother from bleeding that took too long to stop.

The more he learned the more he understood the desperate need to find a solution to giving blood that a healthy person could easily spare, and which would restore life to someone who would otherwise die.

He even asked himself what risks he would take, if the dying person were Beata. Could he watch her fade away, suffering, if the gift of someone else’s blood could save her?

What was the great terror? Death? Annihilation? Being alone for ever? Being guilty of some irreversible sin? Or cowardice? The eternal blame of those you ignored, or of those your courage could have saved?

On Friday evening he went to see Ardal Juster in his home. It was considerably later than good manners would have permitted calling, especially upon someone you did not know well. He still went.

Juster was surprised, but he realised immediately that the matter was grave. As soon as they were in his comfortable, overcrowded study he closed the door and faced Rathbone.

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t believe we should prosecute,’ Rathbone said gravely. ‘I think we may end up losing, and making Rand seem a hero . . .’

‘For God’s sake, man!’ Juster said incredulously. ‘He kidnapped a woman whom you know well, and care for. If Radnor had died, or even one of the children, he would have had to kill her. She would never have kept silent over it. I know that, you know it, and Rand as sure as hellfire knew it.’

‘But it didn’t happen, Juster,’ Rathbone pointed out. ‘She’s alive. You can’t prosecute someone for what you believe they would have done in circumstances that did not happen. You know that as well as I know it. The defence will say that the children’s parents took money . . .’

‘But they didn’t know what was going to happen to the children,’ Juster said hotly, his voice rising.

‘But what if Rand said he had told them in the beginning?’

‘He didn’t!’ But Juster’s voice wavered.

‘Of course he damned well didn’t,’ Rathbone agreed. ‘But can you prove that, if Rand swears he did?’

Juster stared at him.

‘You can only charge him with kidnapping Hester, and hope that her testimony stands up to the defence, because they’ll attack her any way they can think of.’

‘Is that really why you’re withdrawing?’ Juster asked, but his voice was softer, without blame.

‘No . . . no, I don’t think so. In fact I’m not withdrawing. I would rather be there to sit beside you and give you whatever counsel I can when the time comes, which it will. If you go ahead . . .?’

‘If I don’t, they’ll find someone else,’ Juster pointed out. ‘They’ve already told me as much.’

‘Then we are in for a battle,’ Rathbone answered him. ‘We had better prepare.’

RATHBONE WAS filled with an extraordinary sense of both exhilaration and fear as he entered the courtroom at the Old Bailey, London’s famous Central Criminal Court. This was the opening of the case against Hamilton Rand and Adrienne Radnor, for the abduction of Hester Monk.

He was afraid for Hester, because she was the only witness against either of the accused during the major commission of the crime. If the defence could cast doubt on her word, either by fact or by the assassination of her character, then there was no case to answer.

Of course, Hooper would be called. Charles Colbert, taking the defence, could very simply raise questions as to Monk’s impartiality, as Hester’s husband, his judgement, and the need now to defend his very violent action. He could even call the surly gardener to attest to his injuries, incurred in very properly protecting his master from the intrusion of men about whom he knew nothing. They were the attackers, not he, and it was he who had received the injuries.

It would be better to call Hooper, although even his testimony could be brought into doubt. After all, Monk was his superior. Apart from loyalty, there was also the question of his future employment. It was far too easy a weapon for Colbert not to use it.

Squeaky and Scuff were equally vulnerable. Worm was not even to be considered, although, having met him, Rathbone thought he would hold his own very well. Anyone who bullied him would look brutal and earn the jury’s contempt, and even worse, their dislike. Of course, Colbert would not let it get so far. He would have him eliminated unseen, on the grounds of his age and total lack of education.

It was going to be a very difficult case. Rathbone looked across the long familiar courtroom with its magnificent carved judge’s bench, its double row of jurors’ seats. Above them, isolated from the body of the court, was the dock where the accused would sit, guarded by gaolers. He sat at his table beside Ardal Juster before the empty space like an arena, in which was the witness box, with its own little spiral stair. Charles Colbert for the defence was sitting, ostentatiously comfortable, at the other side. It was a well-learned art. He was not a comfortable man. He was lean, a little hollow-chested, with very long legs. He reminded Rathbone of a studious stork, physically ill-balanced, but when you met his eyes or heard his knife-edged tongue, you realised his intellectual brilliance.

This was Rathbone’s first appearance since being legally reinstated after his disgrace. He was second to Juster, but he was permitted to question witnesses. They had already agreed that he would not question Hester. Their history, both private and professional, was too open to innuendo.

The court was brought to order, presided over by Lord Justice Patterson, a judge Rathbone was not familiar with. Perhaps that was an advantage.

The preliminaries were the same as always. The jury took their places. They were all respectable men in their middle years, men who owned substantial property, and of course had no known blemishes on their reputations. That they were peers of the accused was seldom true, but in this instance it was. Except, of course, for Adrienne Radnor, sitting beside Hamilton Rand in the dock. Women did not meet the requirements of the law, and were not considered suitable intellectually or emotionally for such a task.

Juster rose to his feet and gave a very brief introduction to his case. He said only that it concerned an issue that some of the jury might not have had occasion to consider. The evidence would be deeply disturbing, and their responsibility would be heavy and complex, but he trusted them completely. To fail in this case would be to fail honesty not only here in the present, but far into the future as well.

Rathbone had agreed to this when they discussed it earlier. Seeing the jury’s faces now, he felt even more strongly that it was the right tactic.

Hester was the first witness called. This was the most risky tactic because in the end the case depended upon her. If she impressed them well, then the other witnesses would be believed; if not, then nothing else would work.

Rathbone sat stiff-backed, his fingers laced together, white knuckles in his lap beneath the table where they could not be seen.

Hester climbed the steps of the witness stand and stood at the top, her hands by her sides, her face calm. She was wearing a blue dress, which was softly draped and flattering. It was the colour of her nurse’s dress, but without the white apron.

Juster began. He and Rathbone had planned this in detail.

‘Mrs Monk, in August of this year, where were you working?’

‘At the annexe to the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich,’ she replied. Her voice was calm and steady, but she looked pale. Rathbone hated it that she had to endure this again and he was afraid for her. She could so easily be hurt.

‘In what capacity?’ Juster’s voice was gentle, but it carried to every corner of the gallery behind him as well as to the jury in their carved seats, and the judge before them all.

‘As a nurse, mostly on night duty,’ she answered.

‘Had you been there long?’ Again he asked innocently, as if he had little idea what her answer would be.

‘About three weeks.’

‘So the job was new to you?’ Now he looked surprised.

‘The hospital was new to me,’ she answered. ‘I have been a nurse on and off since the Crimean War.’

He affected surprise. ‘The Crimean War! Were you in Sebastopol then, with Florence Nightingale?’ He pitched his voice so that no man or woman in the court could have failed to hear him, or the name of perhaps the most famous nurse in the world, a heroine to any soldier.

‘Yes,’ she acknowledged.

‘And you are still nursing?’

She lifted her chin a little. ‘I did so for some time after returning to England, then I married. I went back to nursing temporarily because a friend from those days was taken ill. She asked me to fill in for her, until she was better. She did not know how long that would be. It was a hospital treating mostly men from the navy, with injuries not unlike those I was used to treating before. I did not feel I could refuse her.’